


unless you can die when the dream is past

by aphrodite_mine



Category: Playboy Club, Sucker Punch (2011)
Genre: Canon Gay Character, F/F, Missus Clause Challenge, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-13
Updated: 2011-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(She's been found out, exposed. The word <em>homosexual</em> clinging to her skin like a day's sweat. Gritty. Staining her.</p><p>The world shattering, coming back together in long, slow waves. Coming back wrong. Coming back darker.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	unless you can die when the dream is past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [majesdane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdane/gifts).



> A kind of blink-and-you-miss-it crossover. Hopefully I've done justice to the prompts. Have a happy yuletide, majesdane!

"Sentence first. Verdict afterwards."  
\- Lewis Carrol, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_

*

 _The police are here, oh, god, she can't move she can't move, and here's Sean he'll know what to do, tell me what to do,_ "Move," _he says, shouts, the boy just behind him, his face tight with fear, but she can't, she can't, and here's Frances, Frances who she just met but feels like she's known always, always, and Frances is taking her hand, worry lines set around her mouth,_ "Come on, Alice, we've got to get out of here," _and she moves, suddenly, gratefully, holding on to those fingers, hard, her heart up in her throat, and they're here, they're here anyway, guns out, batons out,_ "We're not armed," _Sean, he'll tell them, his voice breaking, and there's laughter, a thudding, Frances's hand tightening, the wall at her back._

The officer's hand tightens around his baton, the leer on his face like something out of a bad dream. "Being queer's dangerous enough."

(They'll put her away for this.)

*

One. Long. Blink.

(She's been found out, exposed. The word _homosexual_ clinging to her skin like a day's sweat. Gritty. Staining her.

The world shattering, coming back together in long, slow waves. Coming back wrong. Coming back darker.)

Open.

*

It's early yet, the club not up to its nightly hustle. A few regulars have staked out their seats and are nursing drinks, watching as the doors flash open and closed. Alice brushes lint off the shoulder of a jacket, tidying the corners before hanging it up.

Then, there:

The air changes in the club and Alice senses Janie at her back, close, whispering. "You know what they say about her, don't you?" She doesn't need to point. All eyes are on the woman who just walked in the door. Draped in diamonds, white silk clinging gently to her curves then falling to the floor. A delicate piece perched in a tuck of her dark hair, contrasting, glinting in the muted lights.

"Who?" Alice asks, wanting to hear her name, again.

"Frances Dunhill," Janie says, her breath warm on Alice's neck. "They call her the High Roller, the other girls. I hear she's the heir to some enormous fortune. That her father is an oil tycoon, or maybe even a gangster. They say," and here Janie pauses, stretching out the word between them like elastic, ready to snap, "she's looking for a girl. For one of us."

Alice's attention shifts, the room shrinking and widening, and suddenly she's facing Janie, not the vision making her way through the room. Her eyes narrow. "What do you mean?" She feels itchy everywhere. She might be breaking a sweat.

Maureen glides past (gliding shouldn't be possible in those heels, and yet) but stops and smiles at the doorway, her fingers doing a little dance on the frame. "Oh, you know, Alice. To have and to hold. To sweep away from here and keep as, well, a little house wife. One _elegant gesture_ ," Maureen flicks her wrist in the air, "a check passing hands, and you're hers." Her lips twist. "Doesn't sound so bad to me, aside from the obvious." Maureen rolls her eyes, disappearing quickly into the crowd.

(Alice can't help watching, can't help seeing the way the colors blend, the way the light lands on all of them, but only seems to stay on one. Or two.)

Janie pinches Alice's behind, the fleshy part covered in stockings but free of thick, shimmery fabric, and she jumps. Janie's smile looks blitheful, but with a predatory aftertaste, and Alice's heart thumps. "No," she murmurs. "It doesn't sound so bad at all."

*

Out on the floor, she's called Baby Doll (Carol-Lynne told her it had to do with the sweet, innocent way she had with customers, with the way her voice squeaked out, hesitant and desperate for affection. "They'll love a sweet little Baby Doll," she said at the time, making a note in her folder.) and she works mostly behind the scenes, something about novelty, something about being unspoiled. Fresh.

So, she takes their coats, nodding. Smiling.

Nodding, as the men in suits and loosened ties fondle curls of Blondie's hair while she settles a hand at her hip, watch (entranced and adjusting themselves) as Sweet Pea bends to offer a cigarette. She'll have her own time in the spotlight, Alice knows, but she doesn't know if she should be dreading it.

*

Frances Dunhill. If Alice didn't already know otherwise, she'd assume that someone so utterly _beautiful_ had to be here on a man's arm. Tucked safely away during the day and brought out at night, like fine china. Out for display. But the more Alice watches, the more she realizes that Frances Dunhill isn't out for anyone's display but her own. (She can't, for example, manage to imagine Frances sweeping past a dinner table, wiping her elegant fingers on an apron, flour on her cheek. No, she decides, Frances is the type who takes long strides through alleyways, unafraid of the mobsters and the panhandlers and the darkness and the cops.)

She lifts her hand, gesturing for a drink. The motion on Frances is casual, sexy even, her wrist glistening with jewels. She turns, and Alice memorizes her profile in an instant.

A strong jaw, she thinks, her hands gripping the counter tight. That hair, that deep brown. Those fingers closing around a fresh glass.

*

 _When she dreams_ (fitful, hesitant things) _, Alice goes back to the club. No tails or bunny ears, but the women are still on parade, winking towards the shadow figures but not at them. Never at them._ (Funny, she thinks, her hands tied down at her sides so she won't touch herself, touch anyone else, that she would go back there. That she would go back to Carol-Lynne, and Brenda, and Janie, and Maureen. That she would go back to where no one ever knew, not even suspected.) __

 _They sit across from her, a cold succession of faceless men, feeding her pills and asking questions. She never says the word Mattachine, she never whispers Frances's name._

 _Some things are too sacred._

*

The next night, the club is wilder. Alice hardly has the chance to breathe between making niceties with patrons leering over the counter. There's a sense of something in the air, urgency, the brink of chaos. Carol-Lynne sings, her lithe body swaying on stage but holding no-one's attention. "Jesus," Maureen hisses, leaning against the door frame and adjusting her heel (cigarette tray hanging precariously from her neck). She opens her mouth, but there's a hand, a gruff voice shouting "Sweet Pea!" and with a quick look in Alice's direction, she's off.

She doesn't normally partake, but Alice would give just about anything for a stiff drink.

A pinch on her backside. Alice squeaks, shakes her head. "Janie."

"Are you gonna go for it?" Alice knows exactly what she means, knows that exactly fourteen minutes ago Frances Dunhill slipped by, dropping her shawl at the counter with a brief smile, a flicker of her gaze, a tightening around the mouth.

But she plays dumb. She'll feel better if she lets Janie explain it, lets herself be lead instead of diving in on her own. "Go for what, Janie?"

Janie laughs, and a few heads turn their way. Her laughter is like crystal, bubbling up. "For Frances Dunhill, you dummy. She must have seen something she liked or she wouldn't be back." She draws her attention inward, looking at Alice askance. "And you... wanna get out of here. Right?"

Alice smiles, her eyebrows knitting together. "Oh, you know. It's like Maureen said. It wouldn't be horrible."

"Mmm." A smirk. Then, "I'm taking your station. Go. Work the floor."

She checks herself, smoothing out invisible wrinkles and correcting her posture. Janie laughs, knowingly, and for once it's okay.

*

She takes Alice's hand, making her pause in her casual pass through the club. When their eyes meet (finally, again), she introduces herself. "My name is Frances." Simple, sweet. Her hand is warm.

"I know. Frances Dunhill."

Her eyes widen, then narrow in a smile. "And what else do you know about me, Baby Doll?" Frances shakes her head quickly, loosing a lock of hair from her carefully assembled bun. "No," she corrects, "first I want to know your real name." She reaches out, those elegant fingers brushing at Alice's hair, her shoulder. "After all, you're a very _real_ girl, aren't you?"

Alice can feel the touch all the way to her toes. "A woman, actually." She watches Frances's face carefully, the muscles that tighten, release. Alice presses her lips together. "Alice," she answers, her name sounding like little more than a gasp as Frances's fingers make another pass and she watches the flicker of recognition pass over Frances's skin.

(Later, when they kiss for the first time, and soon after, the second, Alice finds Frances's hand and grips it tight. She doesn't ask about the trembling. She's trembling too.)

*

It's the worst kept secret in the club, Janie winking and nudging Maureen when Alice sees her and blushes to the roots of her hair.

" _Frances_ ," she whispers when no one is looking, nosing into a kiss. Frances's hand settles on her hip, warm and the perfect weight. "Are you going to take me away from here, Frances?"

"I'm going to take you away from here, Alice." She traces Alice's upper lip with a gentle fingertip. "I'm going to take you home."

*

Blink.

(Frances.)

Open.

*

 _Alice remembers Frances's hand on hers. She rolls over_ (the sheets are threadbare, scratchy; the light through the high-up window filters down to grey. Grey everywhere). __

_She's going to be sick._

(She thinks about Sean, about where _he_ is, and vomits. "Gotta learn to keep those pills down," says the doctor, quick, at her side.)

*

One elegant gesture, a check passing hands, and Alice is free.

She doesn't look at Frances until they are miles away from the hospital, the hum of the car engine loud between them, Alice shaking, silent.

Three mile markers pass, and Alice realizes with a jolt that they're not headed into the city, but away from it. She turns to Frances, her eyes widening with alarm.

"Father would prefer if this were all handled as quietly as possible. It wouldn't do for you to come back just yet." Frances's hand leaves the wheel, touches Alice's knee like a bolt of lightening. "I hope that's alright."

Alice swallows, finds a strange comfort in the line of Frances's neck offset by the sunlight. She thinks about Sean, about where _he_ is, though she doesn't say his name.

"I spoke with Mr. Dalton and he's making arrangements for your husband." Frances squeezes quick and lets go, here fingers wrapping once again around the wheel.

"We got off easy, didn't we?" She squints at the sunlight. It doesn't quite feel real, not yet.

"We'll be all right," Frances answers, avoiding the question. She turns to Alice and smiles. There are tears in her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "A Woman's Shortcomings" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.


End file.
